Medicine Man

RISE AND FIGHT AGAINE--Samuel Merwin -- Boni ($1).

In other days kings kept minstrels, to tell the world what mighty men their masters were. U. S. tycoons do not keep minstrels but sometimes they have literate friends. Such a convenient friend to Drugman Louis Kroh Liggett is Author Samuel Merwin (Silk, Temperamental Henry). Last week Liggett drugstores throughout the U. S. were featuring on their cut-rate book counters this "amazing TRUE story of a man who conceived the greatest cooperative organization in history." Because there is no such thing as a Pure Blurb and Ballyhoo Law, Publisher Boni could not be sued for misrepresentation. On the other hand, though this latest Rexall product must certainly be classed as patent medicine, it did not contain any habit-forming drugs.

Sam Merwin and Lou Liggett were boys together on the streets of Detroit. Then their ways parted for 25 years; when they met again they had both made the grade. Liggett's career has enough forge-ahead stuff for three Horatio Alger stories. His Scottish-Dutch ancestry gave him a big body, unbounded assurance, tireless ambition. By the time he was 21 he had a house, a wife, a ponycart and $7,000 in the bank. His first independent venture, with a bankrupt store, was typical. Overnight he painted long rows of red footsteps leading to his shop, was arrested for defacing public property. But the judge let him off and the scheme worked. Just as he was getting a good toehold a long bout of sickness dropped him back to the beginning.

This time he got up to the ground floor, and safely inside. He landed a job as salesman for a new patent medicine called Vinol, sold it with such vim & vigor that at 25 he was able to organize Drug Merchants of America, a buying agency for retail druggists. The scheme burgeoned, flowered into United Drug, with Liggett as secretary, then president and general manager. When a bright employe coined the name Rexall for Liggett's patent medicines, his Boston factory was continually racked with growing pains. Though "Liggett's own deepest convictions were against" chain stores, and "the business was founded on the precisely opposite idea," he soon found himself forced into it by the exciting necessity of expansion. Soon the U. S. was too small for him, he invaded Canada and England, bought the old British firm of Boots. United Drug's peak year (1929) grossed over $106,000,000. But Liggett had his downs as well as his ups. In 1921 he sank his personal fortune in a falling market, had to be rescued by loyal associates. In 1928 United Drug merged with huge Drug, Inc. to dominate the drug trade of the world. In the crash that soon followed Liggett lost his retail chain stores. Author Merwin does not divulge the size or state of Liggett's present fortune, but he leaves the reader feeling comfortably reassured that his hero's virtue has brought not only its own reward but a few extra dividends as well. Author Merwin reveals few intimate details of the inner Liggett, but those few shed their little beams. In his salad days Liggett once took a girl to dinner at a restaurant, faced artichoke for the first time. When the waiter saw that he was painfully swallowing each leaf he tactfully interposed, got a rebuff for his pains. Said Liggett: "You'd better mind your own business. I always eat them this way at home." Famed among drugmen are Liggett's letters to the trade, invariably addressed "Dear Pardner." Sample: "... I now find myself burdened with an innate feel ing to again come in close touch with you. . . . P. S. Our Diarrhoea Cure is a great thing. Try it yourself. I have."

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